Even the Rain(2010)
dir. Icíar Bollaín
A Columbus movie collides with a real water revolt.
Where to watch: Streaming on NetflixLetterboxd ↗
A Spanish film crew shooting a revisionist Christopher Columbus epic in Bolivia gets swept into the real Cochabamba Water War as their production and the uprising collide.
Why it’s here
A film crew shooting a revisionist Columbus epic on the cheap gets pulled into Bolivia's actual 2000 water-privatization uprising — the 500-years-apart parallel is the point, and it doesn't let the crew's good politics excuse their own exploitation of local labor.
Where This Film Lives
- Setting
- Bolivia
Read Alongside
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He walked across Sudan to survive. She walks for water every day.
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Capitalism and Slavery
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Slavery didn't fund empire. Slavery WAS empire.
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Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature
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The colonizer’s real weapon was the classroom.
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Discourse on Colonialism
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Europe called it civilization. Césaire called it what it was.
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Hind Swaraj
Mahatma Gandhi
Gandhi argues that modern civilization itself is the problem.
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How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
Walter Rodney
Africa isn't poor. It was made poor.
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Noli Me Tangere
José Rizal
The novel a colony banned and then followed.
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Once Were Warriors
Alan Duff
Urban Māori. A violent husband. A mother who finally says enough.
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